While this news is not shocking, I’m kind of surprised that they announced it so quickly. When Virginia Roberts Giuffre sued Prince Andrew for sexual abuse and rape, Scotland Yard quickly opened an investigation into Giuffre’s claims, even though Virginia had been telling her story for years. Scotland Yard made a big deal about how they were looking into things too, and how “no one is above the law,” not even the Queen’s favorite pervert son. Well, it turns out that everyone was right to roll their eyes at the Yard’s PR. Scotland Yard has shut down what wasn’t even a real investigation into the crimes against Virginia.
Scotland Yard will not investigate sexual abuse allegations against the Duke of York, according to reports. The Met reportedly spoke to the accuser Virginia Giuffre and are now said to have decided not to take any further action on her claims. The prince faces a civil suit in the US which was brought by Ms Giuffre, who claims he raped her when she was 17.
The Met was also said to have decided not to take further action over Ms Giuffre’s claims against the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who she says trafficked her when the alleged incidents with Andrew took place. Police have not confirmed if they spoke to Ms Giuffre recently.
In August, the Met Police commissioner Cressida Dick said the force would monitor developments in the civil suit against Prince Andrew in the US and review its position not to open an investigation into the allegations. The Met has examined Ms Giuffre’s allegations at least twice since 2015 but has never opened an investigation, saying that the matter is for US authorities. The force reportedly said it would continue to work with the US police on matters relating to Epstein.
A statement reported in The Mirror said: “As a matter of procedure MPS officers reviewed a document released in August 2021 as part of a US civil action. This review has concluded and we are taking no further action. We also reviewed information passed to us by a media organisation in June 2021. This review is complete and no further action will be taken.”
People are saying that Cressida Dick got paid off or that calls were made. I… don’t think that’s how it happened. I think that this is just structural white supremacy and white privilege in action. The Queen’s aides don’t even *need* to make calls to Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard knew well enough to bury the review or fail to investigate, because they understand the ecosystem in which they live. Scotland Yard shouldn’t expect anyone to take them seriously though – not on their “reviews,” not on their investigations. If they can’t even see anything worth investigating in this situation, how do they have any credibility when it comes to other investigations involving human trafficking, rape, pedophilia, and powerful, well-connected criminals?
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, WENN.
This is a joke. Did UK even enter 21st century??
If there’s no pressure from the citizens on their politicians there’s really nothing much bystanders can say. Organizations can drop Andrew or the royals but arrest? Unlikely.
About as far into the 21st century as any country who lets wealthy, powerful, usually white men get away with sexual assault / rape (so pretty much all of them). The US is no better – ask Trump’s victims. He actually confessed to sexual assault on tape and not only was nothing done, he went on to be elected President.
If Trump’s victims were smart, they would band together and file class action rape charges against the orangutang. He does’t have the DOJ protecting him anymore and he is a rapist and sexual assaulter of women.
Also good points Talia.
@ Talia, let’s not forget the two Supreme Court Justices that are sexual predators as well!! Anita Hill was a travesty but Kavanaugh was outright inexcusable!! The fact that Kavanaugh was even considered but birds of a feather flock together!! I am certain that he and Drumpf laughed about assaulting women as a fun adventure amongst white men, with money and connections. Or just being white men, period.
This is sickening to me as an American, but isn’t the age of consent in England 16? If that is the case, they don’t have to investigate it.
They don’t care in general, but they especially don’t care because they have a legal loophole to sit in comfortably. The fact that she was trafficked didn’t matter to them. Women are always the ones who have to prove it.
I am shocked and disgusted by the fact they’ve closed it already. There are plenty of people in the UK who want this investigated, so please don’t think that the British public are the ones turning a blind eye. This has the public’s attention. The police are under so much scrutiny in the UK right now that nobody is buying their shady behaviour. Cressida Dick is probably (hopefully) not going to keep her job much longer.
I think it’s possible they were paid off or threatened. With Cressida’s job on the line already, it’s possible deals were made. I don’t think they simply knew their place and decided to protect Andrew, although at this point nothing would surprise me.
The only thing I’m hoping for is that as this progresses and perhaps new evidence comes to light, they’ll reopen the case. It could be that they already have that intention. Closed cases can be reopened, so Andrew shouldn’t think he’s off the hook in the UK.
They need a new brochure for British tourists with travel warning for women.
UK’s rate of rape/sexual reports that end in convictions is one of the worst in the western world.
I hold UK justice system to higher standard than US one do I thought this blatant use of power would not go well in UK. It’s a shame though
The problem with most justice systems is they are controlled by the gray men in the back rooms…names we will never hear or know! If they are complicit in shielding Randy Andy you can be sure it is mostly because if they open that particular can of worms there will be other names that will be exposed, and they cannot have that. These crimes are often systemic and the only people who are investigated are the expendable…whoever they may be. The corruption is so ingrained that it is not even considered as such anymore. I despair of this sorry world, except I also like to think that there are still good people, and eventually light will be shone on these perpetrators, and justice will be served at long last. One lives in hope!
It’s probably a he said/she said, and without evidence there’s not much they can do. I’m not defending him btw, I believe her.
Majority of rape/SA cases are that way so is in your opinion this reasoning “It’s probably a he said/she said, and without evidence there’s not much they can do” valid not to convict? Very rarely there are witnesses or videos of such crimes.
This is unfortunately the case for so many. Without DNA evidence or evidence of assault, rarely will convictions actually happen in the UK. The law here means they have to be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence. Even if the majority believe the victim, they won’t convict if the evidence isn’t there.
Alpine witch: I don’t believe someone should be convicted on the basis of one person’s claim, no. That is not enough basis to put someone in jail, win a large sum of money in a lawsuit, etc. There needs to be more evidence than that.
“Did UK even enter 21st century??”
Answer: NO.
I am an UK resident, so I can swear that’s the truth.
No, this is the joke. I came here just to share it. LOOK AT MY
GORGEOUS HANDS! lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1JJq_n8TY
nope. This is how their institutions work. I hate them.
The Head of the Met police, Cressida Dick, was awarded a Damehood by Prince Charles in July 2021!! And three months later, the investigation in closed, or not started. I guess Lizzie promised her a little something-something for ignoring her favourites pedophilia. Gross.
I thought the damehood came in 2019 when May resigned EDIT she became a dame two years ago and you were 100% right, became a dmae commander this year. I apologize for my confusion!
But regardless, she shouldn’t have been named a dame or Commissioner or any other title with power, or privilege because she has always been terrible at her job.
Isn’t being terrible at their job, while protecting the higher ranked at the cost of “the plebs” a prerequisite for a title? Maybe I’ve seen and heard to much of all the harm sir Simon Wessely has caused so many ME sufferers to be objective about this.
@Couch potato It certainly seems to be a theme, doesn’t it?
I find that the UK system is one of the most lenient ones in the West. I always read all sorts of crimes done and the offenders rarely get a slap on the wrist. Even life imprisonment doesnt mean life and they are always early releases,new identities,protection for the perpetrators. Its a failed system even for commoners so i doubt anything was going to happen to Andy.
It’s true! I just learned about the Osmond Bell case— a guy murdered his wife and it took 35 years to solve and only then due to dna evidence—then upon conviction the British court sentenced him to serve only TWELVE years with six of it being house arrest. What kind of system is that the punishment for murdering your wife?!!
For whatever reason (I’d never heard of the case before so I know none of the details), he wasn’t convicted of murder. Therefore, your question has a false starting point since the U.K. *doesn’t* impose 12 years for murder – by the time of sentence, this wasn’t a murder case.
Also, he doesn’t have ‘6 years on house arrest’ – that’s not possible in the U.K. He has 6 years behind bars. He will have licence conditions on release for the rest of the sentence (another 6 years) and if he reoffends during that period or breaches the licence conditions, he will be ordered to serve the rest of the custodial sentence.
He was convicted of manslaugher not murder
Me too!! I find it shocking how lenient the justice system is in the UK, whereas here, they are given heave sentences, especially if you are a POC.
Kaiser has it exactly right – there doesn’t need to be an explicit cover up, the entire system is designed to protect him so I doubt there would even have been a discussion. I hope Virginia’s law suit continues to highlight the monarchy’s hypocrisy and weaken it further. Most of all I hope she gets justice.
I’m betting at least 1 phone call was made. No way it wasn’t. The system can both be corrupt and still have people in it that feel they need to remind others of how fragile their positions are.
But I bet that sh!tty royal family are still investigating Meghan for getting bull…I mean, “bullying”!😒
Of course they won’t. The thing is, take Andrew out the equation, there is no doubt that other men participated in Epstein sex trafficking ring in London. So why isn’t the Met investigating that?
Exactly – Andrew is vile, but his fame is also shielding a lot of powerful creeps from being investigated or at least shamed publicly. I think the whole establishment is compact in wanting this to go away quietly – “nothing to see here” – and Andrew’s idiotic interview complicated their “treat the matter with utmost discretion” brief considerably.
I believe that The Queen has no need to put pressure on anyone for this result: all the people in power want this to go away. (The BRF is in fact bungling their ONE job, which is to make Andrew shut up and stay home)
I wish Virginia well, I hope she can have justice, but she’s playing against quite impossible odds.
Just a heads up but Cressida Dick (Head of the Met Police) went to school with none other than Ghislaine Maxwell.
Yes, boys and girls, there is a club and we are not a part of it.
And she was awarded a damehood this summer!
And she’s the one who said Kate was attending Sarah Everard’s vigil legally as she was ‘working’ and so wouldn’t be investigated (despite palace claims she was there in a private capacity) and then the Met moved in after she left and violently dragged off women who had gathered. Gathered to mark the murder of a woman by a police officer. The whole thing is sickening.
Exactly, @thirtynine. Plus the lack of action being taken against police officers who then stalked the women they arrested on Tinder
😖
That’s all I have to say on that. That’s just something else.
That explains everything. She should have been sacked over the Everard case alone.
My heart hurts for women in the UK.
After Sabrina Nessa and Sarah Everard, there was talk about potentially making misogyny a crime in GB, but BoJo gave that a hard pass. That in addition to a classist society probably killed this investigation before it was ever restarted.
And don’t forget that Dominic Raab our justice secretary thinks that you can have misogyny against men too…
Yep. And let’s not forget the justice minister was on live TV and when asked whether mysogyny should be a hate crime, actually replied ( and I went back to get the correct quote because it is so mind-blowing)
“Misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man’….
Once the journalist recovered, she read the him the dictionary definition of misogyny- he still didn’t get it.
Boris Johnson probably sees it as a cute little toff quirk, in fact even his (evil) Home Secretary thinks he’s gone too far. Which says a lot!
The Queen’s insignia is on the police’s uniform . It’s Her Majesty’s police force so the Met was never going to investigate Andrew.
Andrew will use the dropped police investigation as further proof that he didn’t do anything wrong.
Age of consent in the UK is 16 and she was 17, so I assume that’s the justification they will use. However, certainly human trafficking is not legal in the UK – why is that not of concern? And, why are Epstein trafficking concerns not being taken up? This statute seems clear – Section 3.4:
“Securing services etc. by force, threats or deception, where the person is subjected to force, threats or deception designed to induce him or her –
to provide services of any kind”
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/human-trafficking-smuggling-and-slavery
Yes, consent, not age, is the issue when it comes to human trafficking.
I’m assuming rape is also a crime in the UK, in which case a person being “of age” legally at only sixteen (wtf) is irrelevant to the actual accusation and a red herring, clearly being introduced only to throw the public off.
The cover-up continues.
100%. They may be using age as a conver for ignoring the consent issue which, wtf
It’s actually part of a much broader discussion that’s happening here in the UK, where women are unsafe walking on the street, and some have been murdered by police (!)
Talks of sexual abuse and harassment is also much more front and center lately.
I hope it blows up in their faces.
I don’t know if I can link to a guardian article, if I can here’s a fascinating read… https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/09/888-app-plan-to-protect-women-sticking-plaster-that-reinforces-victim-blaming
After it emerged that Sarah Everard’s killer was a serving police officer (despite numeral reports of sexual indecency against him, and a charming nickname of ‘The Rapist’ among his colleagues) who used his badge to stop, cuff her and kidnap her, the Met only said ‘he wasn’t one of us’.
They then said if a woman found herself arrested by a single police officer, she should… call the police to check whether said officer is legit. (which in this case wouldn’t have made a difference, as he was a serving officer, albeit off-duty at the time).
They also mentioned running away, or flagging a bus!
The icing on the cake was the North Yorkshire chief of police, who claimed women should be more street smart and recognise danger more effectively.
So basically, silly naive Sarah who should have known better.
The whole thing is utterly laughable, except women continue to die.
@ HandforthParish, basically they are telling the women that it’s up to the to determine if the police official is bad one, and to call the PD, all while being handcuffed and taken away!?!?? Right, so it’s the women’s fault, in their words, that women in the UK are falling subject to killers and rapist! But he was known within his own unit as “The Rapist” and they did nothing? This is all so sickening….
Now my bubble has been burst as I had read yesterday that they were actively investigating Andrew and how he will never be able to return to his former life, as a working royal. That he isn’t the favorite of TQ, and that he will be saddled with a “job” within The Firm to justify his allowance. In addition to remarrying Fergie as well.
Well, this sucks…..
P.S. Has the flabby faced coward gotten the face he deserves for being ghastly and/ or too many piazzas from Woking?
This is announced on the same day as figures showing that 750 complaints of sexual assault were reported against police officers between 2016-2020. Of course no action was taken, it would open a massive can of worms as the police have to have all the evidence to prove every illegal and nefarious activity he was involved in.
They
Do
Not
Care
About
Women
Most of those complaints were ‘investigated’ and then wiped to protest the officers’ anonymity. God knows what the real figures are like.
Female police officers have also mentioned they won’t report their male colleagues for fear of bullying and/or not getting any backup in dangerous situations.
Exactly, I think they led to something like 34 officers leaving the force. I’m sure that not all of the remaining 716 warranted that outcome but I’m convinced it was more than 34.
I’m sure all of the evidence is already compiled in a secret dossier somewhere, just Scotland Yard will never have access to it. If they can seal Prince Phillip’s will for a century, they will bury all the proof against Andrew until the heat death of the universe.
I hope citizens start to the organize and protest.
100% agree that this decision could have been reached without any explicit communication between Scotland Yard and the RF. This is ingrained, institutional behavior. White supremacy knows how to protect itself.
Looking at this in the most simplistic terms though, it really emphasizes the lack of logic in trying to have a police force that says “no one is above the law” then engage with a monarchy that is based on the “will of God”.
The BRF *is* above the law (in the rare case that they haven’t already had special laws written around them). It’s effectively equal to diplomatic immunity but based on a completely different set of reasoning.
Why bother, nothing would happen to him if they did investigate.
It’s an utter shame that in Britain a prince who loves sticking His Royal Highness (pun intended) into sex trafficked teenage girls can get away with his crimes, just because he’s part of one the most corrupt establishments in the world. I hope Virginia (and other abused sex traffickers) will find justice in the American courts!
When the Civil judge for Virginia’s case says why didn’t you sue the Prince in the UK, this just gives her more proof that she would never get any justice across the pond. At least there is that.
Abolish the monarchy.
Seconded!
for starters…
Thirded
Big out of court settlement coming.
With what I’ve read about the Met police crimes against women it is not such a surprise that Scotland Yard would not even investigate a crime against a teenage girl.
I cannot fkn believe this s***! I am so cross and frustrated, I want to cry. Not only does this POS get away with it but it sets an ugly precedent that people with power/money/connections can and always will get away with this in the future. Beyond livid 🤬
Jimmy Savile raped hundreds of children from 1955 to 2011 when he died, and yet an investigation was only opened after he died. The Crown Prosecution Service repeatedly advised police following up on complaints that there was insufficient evidence to take action against him. It wasn’t until 3 years after Savile’s death that his horrific record of abuse was made public, and the BBC director-general, George Entwistle, had to resign for covering up alleged sexual assaults that took place at the BBC when Savile worked there. He got away with it because he was palsy with the BRF. So this doesn’t surprise me one bit that Scotland Yard and the CPS aren’t investigating Prince Andrew because the BRF has them on a very tight leash.
The British police do nothing about anything misogynistic. There’s been articles about it in the guardian for weeks.
I guess this is why the royal family always liked to have an air of mystery around them — so the public doesn’t see what horrible, racist, misogynistic, entitled, selfish, nasty people they really are (and that includes the “beloved” queen).
It’s just so depressing that after all these years, after all this time, after so many injustices….no one in power stands up for women. We never get justice. Sigh. I’m just so tired of it all.
Me too!! It makes me so sad. I can’t stand it.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. This makes me so angry!! There are no words!!
I interpret this to mean they asked for more documentation to support her charges and she and lawyers unable or unwilling to give more evidence.
Why would you make this assumption? There’s nothing in the statement that suggests that.
Other than being the norm in a patriarchy, I’m not sure why a person would jump to the conclusion that the victim is to blame for the case not going forward.
They asked for nothing. They reviewed some documentation a couple of times, that’s it. One set of docs was sent by a new organization, not even the FBI or other federal investigative body.
“Despite pressure from the media and claims of new evidence, the Met have concluded the claims are not sufficient to warrant further investigation”. Directly quoted from attorneys for Prince Andrew. Their words, not mine.
it’s feeling like a full on war against women at this point, and from so many directions, like they’re not even trying to gaslight us or pretend anymore it’s just a full on nope…we do as we please… and the women who go along with all of this may be even worse… wow… this really hit hard somehow…
Prince Andrew, His Royal Heinous…
I’m thinking that the next thing will be Fergie running to the media talking about “vindication” and People Magazine and other tabs covering it. I can really see this happening.